Analyzing the top concern about San Francisco 49ers rookie wide receiver Ricky Pearsall.
He runs crisp routes, rarely drops passes and he blocks. He's a well-rounded wide receiver. But he didn't have a breakout season until he was 23. And in that breakout season, he caught just four touchdown passes. That's a shockingly low number for a wide receiver who was drafted in Round 1. For comparison, Jacob Cowing, the wide receiver the 49ers drafted in Round 4, caught 13 touchdown passes last season at Arizona.
In five seasons of college football, Pearsall never caught more than 5 touchdown passes in a season despite playing with quarterbacks Jayden Daniels and Anthony Richardson, both of whom were top-five picks. That's puzzling. The 49ers presumably drafted Pearsall to eventually replace Deebo Samuel, whom the 49ers included in trade discussions during the draft. But Samuel scores lots of touchdowns. In his final college season, he scored 11. And in his five-year NFL career, he has scored 38, including 12 last season.
Most successful NFL wide receivers were able to catch more than 5 touchdown passes in a season when they were in college, and even lots of unsuccessful ones. That's because it's hard for college defenses to shut down athletic wide receivers. Pearsall posted extremely athletic testing numbers at the Combine, but his production at Arizona State and Florida was ordinary. Defenses didn't have to go out of their way to keep him out of the end zone. He wasn't a major threat.
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